The present invention relates to a bill handling apparatus or an automated teller machine (ATM) used in banking organizations and so on. In particular, the present invention relates to a bill handling apparatus having an inexpensive dedicated deposit box, which makes possible deposit acceptance of a variety of bills.
Conventionally, as an apparatus installed in banking organizations and so on to automatically execute transactions desired by customers, there is an automated teller machine (ATM). This ATM is also called bill handling apparatus or bill deposit/withdrawal apparatus because it handles mainly bills, and it is described in JP-A-11-175801. JP-A-11-175801 discloses a versatile, simple, small-sized, low cost bill deposit/withdrawal apparatus capable of easily coping with foreign bills and so on differing in bill size, in determination of the number of bill kinds, determination whether recycle is present in each bill kind, or determination whether high function operation of loading, recovery and examination is present.
In general, in a bill handling apparatus or bill deposit/withdrawal apparatus that handles a variety of bills, the apparatus itself must be made small in size. On the other hand, an apparatus capable of handling many bills is desirable from the viewpoint of efficiency improvement in the various transactions. As a result, the number of bills accepted in acceptance boxes placed within the apparatus is also very large. Attention is paid to this point in JP-A-11-175801 as well. However, there is no disclosure as regards to various problems that must be considered in a deposit transaction of accepting bills thrown into a deposit port by a customer into acceptance boxes installed within the apparatus.
For example, for accepting bills deposited by a customer in the apparatus, a dedicated deposit box for accepting the bills become necessary. As described above, it is desirable to accept a large number of bills. On the other hand, an inexpensive deposit box having a simple configuration is desirable. And it is not sufficient to only install such a deposit box in the apparatus, but it is necessary to control the inside of the apparatus while managing bills accepted in the deposit box.